For many years, until the early sixties, London had a clean and quiet fleet of buses and although I do not know too much about the actual vehicles I was in London as the last part of the network was closed down. I had the foresight to take a number of photographs on a Sunday a week or before the final shutdown. The original of this photograph is dated Sunday 15 May 1962.

This photograph was taken outside Isleworth trolleybus depot, Middlesex (now Greater London).

I will let the experts advise me of the type of vehicle, but I can say that the original photograph clearly shows the index number as EXV 60

I do have a number of other photographs taken on the same day all those years ago, and although I do own the copyright to all of them I am prepared to consider passing copies to interested individuals who contact me by following the link on my home page. These buses were replaced by diesel powered vehicles, which, with the luxury of hindsight, was a retrograde step. What would London give now for a fleet of electrically powered vehicles that can easily keep up with the traffic both in terms of speed and acceleration? My memory of these vehicles is that they accelerated much faster than the normal diesel buses of the time, and were very quiet indeed. Perhaps if they had lasted another 10 years they would not have been allowed to die in the way they did.

Their infrastructure imposed many restrictions to traffic management, but I am sure that with the right commitment from all they could have been accommodated. I do remember that Kingston on  Thames, for example, introduced a one way traffic system almost as soon as the trolley wires had gone as if the trolleybuses were seen as old fashioned whose traces had to be removed as soon as possible. Thinking about it, perhaps that view was commonplace in the sixties for many things, not just transport.